


Earthquakes

by ssa_archivist



Category: Smallville
Genre: Angst, Drama, Futurefic, M/M, episode-related
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-06-13
Updated: 2004-06-13
Packaged: 2017-11-01 10:40:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/355724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssa_archivist/pseuds/ssa_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rough sketches of a mental shift</p>
            </blockquote>





	Earthquakes

**Author's Note:**

> This is a rewrite of a story that I put on Level three a while ago. I never properly finished it. 

## Earthquakes

by Shropshire

[]()

* * *

Disclaimer: Not mine. No money. No way. No how. 

It's just some rough sketches of madness. 

Warnings: Not happy. Unless you look at it from a very uncomfortable angle. Slash is implied, not explicit. 

* * *

The first time Lex Luthor went crazy it was necessary. 

All he had ever really wanted was a family, loving and warm and together, to protect and to be protected. Not perfect, not large, but his own. He had known it briefly for his brother's short life, mother, father and son united in their love. A life snatched away, more cruelly than if it had never existed. 

Julian was crying. Crying and crying and crying and then he wasn't; and that's really all that Lex can remember. His mind gives him pictures of his father and of himself, both gently rocking a corpse, singing it sweetly to eternal sleep. 

It was an accident. 

It wasn't his fault. 

It wasn't his father's fault. 

It couldn't ever be his mother's. 

And whatever the truth of exactly whose fault it wasn't, it was too much to cope with for a strong 11 year old made vulnerable by hope. 

His kind delusions blurred the memories and his grief. 

* * *

The second time Lex Luthor went crazy it was exhilarating. 

Pain and betrayal and insane heat that burned through his layers of space and skin and control. Freedom, completely alone and unmonitored for the first time he could remember. No social graces, no need to hide the emotional lava pool that seared within him, kept in check by years of Lionel's scorn and teaching and worse. By his own desire to be normal, to be guided by intellect, to be _good_. 

He went crazy in pieces, day by day, maggot by maggot, until Louis showed up and had always been there. 

Lex had always known that he _could_ be a monster. He hadn't realised that he could ever want to be one. 

Then rescue came, though not the expected one, and Jeckyll bottled up his Hyde. 

* * *

The third time Lex Luthor went crazy it was terrifying. It was also unfair. 

Delusion too close to reality, both equally unwanted, both telling him the same thing: Everybody lied to you. Doctor and servant, lover and brother, friend and father, mind and heart. 

Nobody really loves you. Nobody, nothing and nowhere is safe. 

His last shreds of trust and hope, plucked away one by one, washed down with drugged scotch and water. 

Clawing back his own mind and thoughts, one last act of friendship, hope cruelly teasing again, until a burst of electricity floods him. To save or to destroy. 

To obliterate. 

* * *

The last time Lex Luthor went crazy it was illuminating. He understood, at last, that no good could come. 

His love was foolish, his idol was false, his saviour was a tale, a story for children afraid of the monsters they instinctively feel. 

But the monsters only want to help.  
The monsters take the pain away. 

_He_ tried to stop Lex. Fighting and shouting and sneering. Begging and pleading. Choking and bleeding. 

It was better this way. 

Lex smiled as his rivers of blood ran red and all of the people were freed. 

It felt just wonderful to help. 


End file.
